November 15, 2025 • 20 mins
We toast the 200th episode of this podcast by sharing our (maybe) definitive list of the 200 most memorable brands of the modern era.
Get show notes for this episode and check out past episodes of the Speaking Human podcast by visiting speakinghuman.com.
#200 #Podcast #SpeakingHuman #VO #Branding #Marketing #Advertising #Business #SmallBiz #Brands #Ads #simplify #popculture #art #Brands #logos #Definitive #List
Get show notes for this episode and check out past episodes of the Speaking Human podcast by visiting speakinghuman.com.
#200 #Podcast #SpeakingHuman #VO #Branding #Marketing #Advertising #Business #SmallBiz #Brands #Ads #simplify #popculture #art #Brands #logos #Definitive #List
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Speaking Human.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
The Big two hundred to two h whoa come Welcome to
Speaking Human Official Podcast and Monsters Unlimited.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
I'm Shad Conley and my new year's resolution is to
stop tweeting my enemies links to Snoop Doggs.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Hot Pockets Commercial two hundred.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
And I'm Patrick Jebbert and my new year's resolution is
to stop inserting musical clips of Gangham style into this podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Go oop on comus two hundred.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Our goal on Speaking Human is to simplify complex marketing topics.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Marketing is a murky topic. It's one of the reasons
why we started this whole podcast to begin with, right
was this the shed light on the best practices of marketing?
Two hundred.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
We toss aside all the buzzwords and mumbo jumbo to
focus on how marketing can bring brands and people together.
Speaker 5 (00:59):
There's something meaningful, something valid to that. If people don't
know what your logo is, how much of a problem
is that?
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Two double zero.
Speaker 5 (01:09):
Calm down, it's not the year twenty one twelve.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
We defied the laws of nature and dying.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
We're still here.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Two hundred Did you say?
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Two hundred?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Two hundred?
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Two hundred two hundred.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Well, I'll say it two hundred.
Speaker 5 (01:27):
That is two hundred, right there? Can you hear me?
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Now?
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Oh that's Horizon. Today. On Speaking Human, we toast the
two hundredth episode of this podcast by sharing our maybe
definitive list of the two hundred most memorable brands of
the modern era.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Speaking Human.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
Welcome to Speaking Human, where we simplify the world of
marketing for humans. Got a real close up on you.
I take it a drink of that water. I'm Shad Commonly,
and with me is my co host Patrick Jebber. Patrick.
We did it.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
We made it, Shad. We made it all the way
to two hundred. It's an exciting, exciting accomplishment or feet
or challenge that maybe we gave ourselves at some point.
Speaker 5 (02:33):
Stumble forward, whatever you want to call it. It's been
quite the journey to reach this peak.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
It's just one peak in a long line of peaks.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
It's an endless mountain and that we keep climbing.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (02:49):
For reasons unknown.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
I mean, sometimes in life you want to either challenge
yourself or torture yourself. And this could be either one,
depending on how you want to look at it.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
Yeah, it might be both yeah, it might be a
little bit of both.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Like we probably torture ourselves sometimes, but you know what,
we're also challenging ourselves because it's rewarding.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
Super rewarding, and now you know we could celebrate a
little bit. We do so in honor of our two
hundredth episode, I've got some two hundred related trivia for you.
Oh god, yeah, I've got three questions okay, easy, medium,
(03:33):
and hard, And I think on this day, on this
special day, you have a chance to get all three.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Of these, right, do you think so?
Speaker 5 (03:43):
I think you do?
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Do you think I've I've been training for this for
one hundred and ninety nine episodes and now this is it.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
This is my m Okay, I think you're ready, this
is your moment. So let's start out with an easy.
You know I'm gonna throw one right over the plate
for you. Okay, In what game do you get two
hundred dollars for passing?
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Go oh? Monopoly?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Come on?
Speaker 4 (04:08):
Everybody knows that.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I know.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Well, that's why it's easy. I wanted to warm you up,
get you feeling good, get your confidence up.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Ah.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
Okay, so you're one for one. Let's move on to
question two. Medium, in what year did the United States
turn two hundred years old?
Speaker 4 (04:28):
Uh, nineteen seventy six, That is correct. Okay, two for two.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
Let's see if you can sweep it. I think you can.
This is the hard quote unquote hard question, harder than
the others. Maybe maybe, okay, maybe be easy for you
who set the world record for the men's two hundred
meters dash in two thousand and nine with a time
of nineteen point nineteen seconds.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Wasn't that? Phelps?
Speaker 5 (05:00):
This is running, not so swimming, Oh running? Two hundred
meter dash?
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Oh too?
Speaker 4 (05:05):
I was thinking you were talking about two hundred meter
in the pool.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
I don't even know if that's a real thing in
the pool, but this is on foot. Okay, Bolt, that's right,
it is you saying, Bolt? All right?
Speaker 5 (05:19):
Three for three. I told you I believed in you,
and you did it. Look at that, despite you know,
your little uh swimming snaffoo.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
There isn't that real? Sad you said two hundred meter
in my brain immediately went to swimming for some reason.
Speaker 5 (05:33):
Well, that's probably been more popular in recent years.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Right, yeah? Is it?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Though?
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Here's the thing I can't honestly speak to whether or
not two hundred meters is a real distance in swimming,
So like.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
Why did my brain I don't know. I couldn't tell
you how far two hundred meters is. I don't know
what that means.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
It's pretty far.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
It's not that far.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
It did in less than twenty seconds.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
Yeah, but if you're running and you're swimming and you're
trying to beat a record, it's pretty far.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
I'm not saying it's not a feat. I'm just saying
it's not like, you know, it's not like five miles.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
No, yeah, yeah, it's not a marathon or anything. When
I see those people run marathons and their like average
minute is or their average mile is like five minutes minutes, yeah,
for twenty six miles, I'm like, that is insane.
Speaker 5 (06:19):
It seems impossible, and yet it just keeps getting you know,
people just keep getting faster.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Yeah. When people do like two hundred episodes of a podcast,
I'm like that those guys are they're superhuman.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
And some people do it in like a year, and
it took us like twelve years.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
It only took us. Yeah, it's been it's been thirteen years.
Oh my god, what are we doing with our lives?
Speaker 5 (06:43):
I don't know where did the time go?
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Way did the time go?
Speaker 5 (06:46):
So today's episode, it's gonna be a little different, though,
isn't it?
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Patrick?
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Not quite your normal episode. We're doing something special because
it's a special episode.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Yeah, we're doing something a little unique. I really believe
that the thing that we do in our day to
day lives, in our professional lives, right, is that we
help brands communicate with their customers, with their clients, whatever.
And it's that branding. It's that messaging that really encapsulates
(07:15):
what we do, you know, Like we do that through
a bunch of different ways. Email marketing, website development, all
those things. Those are all just tools, but you're really
communicating a message for a brand, whatever it is. It
could be a company, it could be an organization, it
could be a product, it could be a person, it
could be a person. All of those are really just brands, right,
(07:38):
And we've talked about it for the last thirteen years.
We've been talking about brands and what they do and
the best practices. Long story short, it's about the brands.
And so today's episode is how do we take and
deliver a two hundredth episode with That's right, two hundred brands.
(07:58):
It's hard.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
Yeah, that was the challenge placed upon ourselves by ourselves.
Could we create a list of the top two hundred
brands in the history of the world, of the universe,
of the universe take it farther.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Yeah, because you know, we're the only ones in the universe.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
So yeah, So we attempted to take a crack at this,
and this was a significant undertaking. This is a big list.
Usually we do lists, it's like top five.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
And we tried to make it somewhat all encompassing the
stuff that really matters, the brands that you will probably
identify with. And honestly, I would say each person would
probably know seventy five percent of this list at the
very least.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
I would say that's low. I would think most people
would know closer to ninety But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe
it depends on the person, their age, something like that.
But they're all pretty recogniz and you're like, man, just
the number of names, the number of brands, the recognition.
A lot of brands have gone through the orbit of
this show that we've talked about over the years. But
(09:09):
when you think about just all the brands out there,
and like some of them that are big, some of
them that have been around in the past, some of
them that have been around for one hundred years. It's
just you start to see the expanse of the branding world,
you know, when we get into this list. And I
think that's kind of a point here today is we
started referring to it as the we didn't start the
fire of branding lists, because once you start reading them off,
(09:32):
it kind of feels like that a little bit.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
Yeah, it does. And we joked about this off air
before the show listeners that we really wish we had
it in us to use the cadence of we didn't
start the fire and like rhyme the brands. If we could,
that would have been a little extra.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
Yeah, we're not quite to that little that might be
three hundred.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
And to use the words of the youth today, we
would have been doing too much. But we have a
bloody good list for you today, because I think this
list is gonna really knock your socks off.
Speaker 5 (10:06):
Yeah, it's gonna blow your mind. So let's get to
the list. Then here we go, the top two hundred
brands ever.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
All right, and these we should preface are not in
any order of importance.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
Yeah, in no particular order whatsoever.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
Yeah, yeah, all right, So the first fifty here it goes, ready,
like the micro machines.
Speaker 5 (10:30):
Yeah, see if you can rattle them off.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
Gucci, Crocs, The New York Times, cannon Ford, Hello Kitty,
American Express, Barbie, Uber, Red Bull, Stranger Things, BMW, post It,
Mister Clean, GameStop, Twitter, also known as X, Chippotele, SpongeBob, SquarePants, BBC,
ray Ban, Guinness, Rubik's Cube, Converse, Dungeons and Dragons, Playboy, Sharpie, Vogue,
(11:02):
The Periodic Table, pac Man, Disney, Hasbro, Go Pro, The Simpsons,
McDonald's YouTube, Facebook, Dollars, Shave Club, Apple, DreamWorks, Hot Wheels, Pixar, Taylor, Swift,
Time Magazine, Microsoft, Batman, Porsche, National Geographic, Blockbuster, Levi's and
(11:23):
Victoria's Secret.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
Well done, the first fifty.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
What do you think now? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (11:30):
I think a lot of good names on there, A
lot of good names.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
All right, give us the next fifty, shad, Let's do it.
Speaker 5 (11:37):
Yep, let's keep it going. Mattel Iikea, Home Depot, Walmart, Photoshop, Fortnite, Cheetos, Toyota,
Mister Beast, PlayStation, The Matrix, Budweiser, Gatorade, Louis Vuitton, Marriott, Goodyear,
(11:58):
Lord of the Rings, Sega, Netflix, The North Face, The
Bible Bugs, Bunny, Looreal, Dell, Starbucks, Ghostbusters, Rolling Stone, Instagram,
Game of Thrones, NASA, MasterCard, Harry Potter, Tesla, Avis, Roadblocks,
(12:22):
Mickey Mouse, Jesus, Pokemon, IBM, PayPal, Oprah, Winfrey, Hershey's, beats By, Dre,
The Terminator, Exxon Mobile, star Wars, Amazon, Energizer, The Muppets, Chanel.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Shout out to Jesus on the list.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
Yeah, surprise entry there.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
All right, Next fifty Hollywood, nerf Patagonia, Disneyland, Google, Tinder, Snickers, Einstein, Superman,
That wasn't a question, State Farm, Air, Jordan Pringles, Spider Man, Mercedes, Benz,
(13:07):
Warner Brothers, Gap, Bows, Nintendo, Spotify, Elvis, Jack Daniels, Target,
Universal Studios, Chat, GPT, Dorito's Rolex Nesley, Lego, Hines, Madonna,
King Kong, Pepsi, The Smiley Face, KitKat, hagandhas Adidas, eBay,
(13:32):
Lowe's Titanic, Eminem's, Visa, Betty Crocker, Coca Cola, Polaroid, Beyonce, Nirvana,
Harley Davidson, Minecraft, Marlborough and Van's all right.
Speaker 5 (13:48):
The final fifty, Here we go, Tetris, Dyson, Prince, Wikipedia, Zippo,
James Bond, TikTok Old, Spice, Nike, Skittles, Crayola, h and
m Intel, Sonic, The Hedgehog, Godzilla, Airbnb, Taco, Bell, Kellogg's, Buddha, Marvel, Boeing, Berkshire, Hathaway, Oreo,
(14:18):
Super Mario, Brothers, Ferrari, The Beatles, Sony, Xbox, CVS, Lai's
General Electric, MTV, Monster Energy, The Solar System, Domino's, Pizza, Duo, Lingo, Verizon, DC, Comics,
Burger King, Sesame, Street, Velcrow, Heineken, Adobe, Ben and Jerry's,
(14:44):
The Peace Sign, HBO, Johnson and Johnson, Plato, KFC, and Monopoly,
the answer to one of your trivia questions, Patrick, Monopoly, Monopoly.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
So we read these out for the most part without pause,
and I think, like you said, probably ninety percent people know,
maybe more, but we just read through them. I feel
like you could go back through and just keep listening
to this cast and probably catch a new one because
you're thinking about each one. Is it's being read, You're
(15:19):
going to feel something. I get it that this one's
in there and that one and this one and that one,
but sometimes you're thinking about the previous one for longer,
like oh yeah, and then I'm already through five more
and you're like, did he mention this? Because there's that
many brands on there, here's something interesting. What are some
good pause moments in the list? I asked chat GPT,
(15:42):
So I asked for pause moments, and here's what I got.
This brand the robot. Everyone's using to do their job
while secretly fearing it's coming for their job.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
So you asked chat GPT what the pause moments were,
and one of the pause moments they said was chat.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
GPT, Yeah, what are the odds? Very meta? Yeah, Coca Cola.
Let's pause for a moment to consider that. The fact
that Coca Cola was originally pitched as a medicinal tonic,
somehow went on to become the most universally recognized logo
on earth. Pretty crazy Apple from a garage in California
(16:22):
to selling twelve hundred dollars rectangles that break if you
look at them wrong Blockbuster. Remember when Friday Night Met
Driving to a physical store to rent a VHS tape
that may or may not be rewound, you had to
rewind it. People went and bought devices that would rewind
(16:42):
not in the VCR, but rewind the VHS tape outside
of that very quickly, so that they could take them
back to the store. Do you remember that?
Speaker 5 (16:52):
Yeah, that's that was a weird thing.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Was that?
Speaker 4 (16:54):
Not like a weird point in time? But Blockbuster a
brand that made the two hundred list. Starbucks Think about this,
Starbucks made it socially acceptable to pay six dollars or
more today for a cup of bean juice that you
can't pronounce. Nike, just do it might be the most
(17:17):
aggressively motivational phrase ever trademarked. We just talked about it
on the podcast. Yeah it worked, right. So just some
pause moments to think about in that two hundred list,
and you might have tons of those, thinking about how
a brand has affected you in your life.
Speaker 5 (17:34):
Yeah, well I would think, you know, you give those
pause moments for a few and some of the big ones.
I think you could almost do that for any one
of the ones on the list. You know, that's kind
of where we're at with these brands that they're all
they've had that kind of impact. They're those types of
companies products you know, they've been out there, they've been
in the world, and they've had that impact on the
(17:55):
market where they've been around for that amount of time,
they've engaged with customers. You know, most people know those names.
They can picture the products or what they look like
or how they've been a part of their life. So
they all kind of have that story attached to them.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
And that's a great point. I didn't say this, you
said it. The stories. This is what the greatest brands
do really well, is that they have a great story.
Sometimes they have insanely chaotic starts. Sometimes they last for
a long time. Sometimes those stories have a tragic end.
So all of these brands have those stories, and we're
(18:33):
a part of that, each individual, you know, and how
we interact and gauge with brands. So it's pretty exciting
to have a list like this, it is.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
And seeing the list as a whole, which we will
be posting, you know, I think a lot of people
will have the reaction, which I hope. I can't believe
they didn't include blank, right, And I think that's the
kind of thing we want to hear too. You know,
what did we miss? What were the ones that you
were like, I can't believe this is missing. You know,
I was waiting to hear this and you didn't do it,
(19:01):
or you know, other feedback like, ah, I'm so glad
you had this one on there. This was a definite
for me. So that's kind of thing we're looking for
with when you put together something like this, which is
such a big undertaking.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
I hope there's stuff that people say we missed, Shad,
I can't believe we forgot that.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
There's got to be Yeah, how do we overlook that?
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Hm?
Speaker 4 (19:21):
I feel like it's bound to happen And that's okay.
This is where this back and forth between us the hosts,
and you the listeners. This this is so important, the
relationship that we have together over thirteen years, two hundred
episodes Speaking Human.
Speaker 5 (19:40):
Yeah, so why don't you tell the people where they
can find the full list and how they can get
in touch with us. They want to tell us what
a giant mistake we made with this list.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Yeah, So that's it for today's episode. You can find
current and past episodes of the podcast on Speaking Human
dot com. Searching that little search b. You can put
two hundred in there. You'll get this episode. See the
full list, and if you're so inclined leave us a
little feedback. You can email us at feedback at speakinghuman
dot com.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
We'll be back in two weeks with another episode of
Speaking Human. That's right, this goes beyond the two hundred mark.
We're going to keep going. Catch you then humans
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Speakcking human
Speaking Human.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
The Big two hundred to two h whoa come Welcome to
Speaking Human Official Podcast and Monsters Unlimited.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
I'm Shad Conley and my new year's resolution is to
stop tweeting my enemies links to Snoop Doggs.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Hot Pockets Commercial two hundred.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
And I'm Patrick Jebbert and my new year's resolution is
to stop inserting musical clips of Gangham style into this podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Go oop on comus two hundred.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Our goal on Speaking Human is to simplify complex marketing topics.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Marketing is a murky topic. It's one of the reasons
why we started this whole podcast to begin with, right
was this the shed light on the best practices of marketing?
Two hundred.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
We toss aside all the buzzwords and mumbo jumbo to
focus on how marketing can bring brands and people together.
Speaker 5 (00:59):
There's something meaningful, something valid to that. If people don't
know what your logo is, how much of a problem
is that?
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Two double zero.
Speaker 5 (01:09):
Calm down, it's not the year twenty one twelve.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
We defied the laws of nature and dying.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
We're still here.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Two hundred Did you say?
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Two hundred?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Two hundred?
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Two hundred two hundred.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Well, I'll say it two hundred.
Speaker 5 (01:27):
That is two hundred, right there? Can you hear me?
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Now?
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Oh that's Horizon. Today. On Speaking Human, we toast the
two hundredth episode of this podcast by sharing our maybe
definitive list of the two hundred most memorable brands of
the modern era.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Speaking Human.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
Welcome to Speaking Human, where we simplify the world of
marketing for humans. Got a real close up on you.
I take it a drink of that water. I'm Shad Commonly,
and with me is my co host Patrick Jebber. Patrick.
We did it.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
We made it, Shad. We made it all the way
to two hundred. It's an exciting, exciting accomplishment or feet
or challenge that maybe we gave ourselves at some point.
Speaker 5 (02:33):
Stumble forward, whatever you want to call it. It's been
quite the journey to reach this peak.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
It's just one peak in a long line of peaks.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
It's an endless mountain and that we keep climbing.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (02:49):
For reasons unknown.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
I mean, sometimes in life you want to either challenge
yourself or torture yourself. And this could be either one,
depending on how you want to look at it.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
Yeah, it might be both yeah, it might be a
little bit of both.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Like we probably torture ourselves sometimes, but you know what,
we're also challenging ourselves because it's rewarding.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
Super rewarding, and now you know we could celebrate a
little bit. We do so in honor of our two
hundredth episode, I've got some two hundred related trivia for you.
Oh god, yeah, I've got three questions okay, easy, medium,
(03:33):
and hard, And I think on this day, on this
special day, you have a chance to get all three.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Of these, right, do you think so?
Speaker 5 (03:43):
I think you do?
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Do you think I've I've been training for this for
one hundred and ninety nine episodes and now this is it.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
This is my m Okay, I think you're ready, this
is your moment. So let's start out with an easy.
You know I'm gonna throw one right over the plate
for you. Okay, In what game do you get two
hundred dollars for passing?
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Go oh? Monopoly?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Come on?
Speaker 4 (04:08):
Everybody knows that.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I know.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Well, that's why it's easy. I wanted to warm you up,
get you feeling good, get your confidence up.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Ah.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
Okay, so you're one for one. Let's move on to
question two. Medium, in what year did the United States
turn two hundred years old?
Speaker 4 (04:28):
Uh, nineteen seventy six, That is correct. Okay, two for two.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
Let's see if you can sweep it. I think you can.
This is the hard quote unquote hard question, harder than
the others. Maybe maybe, okay, maybe be easy for you
who set the world record for the men's two hundred
meters dash in two thousand and nine with a time
of nineteen point nineteen seconds.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Wasn't that? Phelps?
Speaker 5 (05:00):
This is running, not so swimming, Oh running? Two hundred
meter dash?
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Oh too?
Speaker 4 (05:05):
I was thinking you were talking about two hundred meter
in the pool.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
I don't even know if that's a real thing in
the pool, but this is on foot. Okay, Bolt, that's right,
it is you saying, Bolt? All right?
Speaker 5 (05:19):
Three for three. I told you I believed in you,
and you did it. Look at that, despite you know,
your little uh swimming snaffoo.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
There isn't that real? Sad you said two hundred meter
in my brain immediately went to swimming for some reason.
Speaker 5 (05:33):
Well, that's probably been more popular in recent years.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Right, yeah? Is it?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Though?
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Here's the thing I can't honestly speak to whether or
not two hundred meters is a real distance in swimming,
So like.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
Why did my brain I don't know. I couldn't tell
you how far two hundred meters is. I don't know
what that means.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
It's pretty far.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
It's not that far.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
It did in less than twenty seconds.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
Yeah, but if you're running and you're swimming and you're
trying to beat a record, it's pretty far.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
I'm not saying it's not a feat. I'm just saying
it's not like, you know, it's not like five miles.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
No, yeah, yeah, it's not a marathon or anything. When
I see those people run marathons and their like average
minute is or their average mile is like five minutes minutes, yeah,
for twenty six miles, I'm like, that is insane.
Speaker 5 (06:19):
It seems impossible, and yet it just keeps getting you know,
people just keep getting faster.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Yeah. When people do like two hundred episodes of a podcast,
I'm like that those guys are they're superhuman.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
And some people do it in like a year, and
it took us like twelve years.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
It only took us. Yeah, it's been it's been thirteen years.
Oh my god, what are we doing with our lives?
Speaker 5 (06:43):
I don't know where did the time go?
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Way did the time go?
Speaker 5 (06:46):
So today's episode, it's gonna be a little different, though,
isn't it?
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Patrick?
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Not quite your normal episode. We're doing something special because
it's a special episode.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Yeah, we're doing something a little unique. I really believe
that the thing that we do in our day to
day lives, in our professional lives, right, is that we
help brands communicate with their customers, with their clients, whatever.
And it's that branding. It's that messaging that really encapsulates
(07:15):
what we do, you know, Like we do that through
a bunch of different ways. Email marketing, website development, all
those things. Those are all just tools, but you're really
communicating a message for a brand, whatever it is. It
could be a company, it could be an organization, it
could be a product, it could be a person, it
could be a person. All of those are really just brands, right,
(07:38):
And we've talked about it for the last thirteen years.
We've been talking about brands and what they do and
the best practices. Long story short, it's about the brands.
And so today's episode is how do we take and
deliver a two hundredth episode with That's right, two hundred brands.
(07:58):
It's hard.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
Yeah, that was the challenge placed upon ourselves by ourselves.
Could we create a list of the top two hundred
brands in the history of the world, of the universe,
of the universe take it farther.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Yeah, because you know, we're the only ones in the universe.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
So yeah, So we attempted to take a crack at this,
and this was a significant undertaking. This is a big list.
Usually we do lists, it's like top five.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
And we tried to make it somewhat all encompassing the
stuff that really matters, the brands that you will probably
identify with. And honestly, I would say each person would
probably know seventy five percent of this list at the
very least.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
I would say that's low. I would think most people
would know closer to ninety But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe
it depends on the person, their age, something like that.
But they're all pretty recogniz and you're like, man, just
the number of names, the number of brands, the recognition.
A lot of brands have gone through the orbit of
this show that we've talked about over the years. But
(09:09):
when you think about just all the brands out there,
and like some of them that are big, some of
them that have been around in the past, some of
them that have been around for one hundred years. It's
just you start to see the expanse of the branding world,
you know, when we get into this list. And I
think that's kind of a point here today is we
started referring to it as the we didn't start the
fire of branding lists, because once you start reading them off,
(09:32):
it kind of feels like that a little bit.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
Yeah, it does. And we joked about this off air
before the show listeners that we really wish we had
it in us to use the cadence of we didn't
start the fire and like rhyme the brands. If we could,
that would have been a little extra.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
Yeah, we're not quite to that little that might be
three hundred.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
And to use the words of the youth today, we
would have been doing too much. But we have a
bloody good list for you today, because I think this
list is gonna really knock your socks off.
Speaker 5 (10:06):
Yeah, it's gonna blow your mind. So let's get to
the list. Then here we go, the top two hundred
brands ever.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
All right, and these we should preface are not in
any order of importance.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
Yeah, in no particular order whatsoever.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
Yeah, yeah, all right, So the first fifty here it goes, ready,
like the micro machines.
Speaker 5 (10:30):
Yeah, see if you can rattle them off.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
Gucci, Crocs, The New York Times, cannon Ford, Hello Kitty,
American Express, Barbie, Uber, Red Bull, Stranger Things, BMW, post It,
Mister Clean, GameStop, Twitter, also known as X, Chippotele, SpongeBob, SquarePants, BBC,
ray Ban, Guinness, Rubik's Cube, Converse, Dungeons and Dragons, Playboy, Sharpie, Vogue,
(11:02):
The Periodic Table, pac Man, Disney, Hasbro, Go Pro, The Simpsons,
McDonald's YouTube, Facebook, Dollars, Shave Club, Apple, DreamWorks, Hot Wheels, Pixar, Taylor, Swift,
Time Magazine, Microsoft, Batman, Porsche, National Geographic, Blockbuster, Levi's and
(11:23):
Victoria's Secret.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
Well done, the first fifty.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
What do you think now? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (11:30):
I think a lot of good names on there, A
lot of good names.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
All right, give us the next fifty, shad, Let's do it.
Speaker 5 (11:37):
Yep, let's keep it going. Mattel Iikea, Home Depot, Walmart, Photoshop, Fortnite, Cheetos, Toyota,
Mister Beast, PlayStation, The Matrix, Budweiser, Gatorade, Louis Vuitton, Marriott, Goodyear,
(11:58):
Lord of the Rings, Sega, Netflix, The North Face, The
Bible Bugs, Bunny, Looreal, Dell, Starbucks, Ghostbusters, Rolling Stone, Instagram,
Game of Thrones, NASA, MasterCard, Harry Potter, Tesla, Avis, Roadblocks,
(12:22):
Mickey Mouse, Jesus, Pokemon, IBM, PayPal, Oprah, Winfrey, Hershey's, beats By, Dre,
The Terminator, Exxon Mobile, star Wars, Amazon, Energizer, The Muppets, Chanel.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Shout out to Jesus on the list.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
Yeah, surprise entry there.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
All right, Next fifty Hollywood, nerf Patagonia, Disneyland, Google, Tinder, Snickers, Einstein, Superman,
That wasn't a question, State Farm, Air, Jordan Pringles, Spider Man, Mercedes, Benz,
(13:07):
Warner Brothers, Gap, Bows, Nintendo, Spotify, Elvis, Jack Daniels, Target,
Universal Studios, Chat, GPT, Dorito's Rolex Nesley, Lego, Hines, Madonna,
King Kong, Pepsi, The Smiley Face, KitKat, hagandhas Adidas, eBay,
(13:32):
Lowe's Titanic, Eminem's, Visa, Betty Crocker, Coca Cola, Polaroid, Beyonce, Nirvana,
Harley Davidson, Minecraft, Marlborough and Van's all right.
Speaker 5 (13:48):
The final fifty, Here we go, Tetris, Dyson, Prince, Wikipedia, Zippo,
James Bond, TikTok Old, Spice, Nike, Skittles, Crayola, h and
m Intel, Sonic, The Hedgehog, Godzilla, Airbnb, Taco, Bell, Kellogg's, Buddha, Marvel, Boeing, Berkshire, Hathaway, Oreo,
(14:18):
Super Mario, Brothers, Ferrari, The Beatles, Sony, Xbox, CVS, Lai's
General Electric, MTV, Monster Energy, The Solar System, Domino's, Pizza, Duo, Lingo, Verizon, DC, Comics,
Burger King, Sesame, Street, Velcrow, Heineken, Adobe, Ben and Jerry's,
(14:44):
The Peace Sign, HBO, Johnson and Johnson, Plato, KFC, and Monopoly,
the answer to one of your trivia questions, Patrick, Monopoly, Monopoly.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
So we read these out for the most part without pause,
and I think, like you said, probably ninety percent people know,
maybe more, but we just read through them. I feel
like you could go back through and just keep listening
to this cast and probably catch a new one because
you're thinking about each one. Is it's being read, You're
(15:19):
going to feel something. I get it that this one's
in there and that one and this one and that one,
but sometimes you're thinking about the previous one for longer,
like oh yeah, and then I'm already through five more
and you're like, did he mention this? Because there's that
many brands on there, here's something interesting. What are some
good pause moments in the list? I asked chat GPT,
(15:42):
So I asked for pause moments, and here's what I got.
This brand the robot. Everyone's using to do their job
while secretly fearing it's coming for their job.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
So you asked chat GPT what the pause moments were,
and one of the pause moments they said was chat.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
GPT, Yeah, what are the odds? Very meta? Yeah, Coca Cola.
Let's pause for a moment to consider that. The fact
that Coca Cola was originally pitched as a medicinal tonic,
somehow went on to become the most universally recognized logo
on earth. Pretty crazy Apple from a garage in California
(16:22):
to selling twelve hundred dollars rectangles that break if you
look at them wrong Blockbuster. Remember when Friday Night Met
Driving to a physical store to rent a VHS tape
that may or may not be rewound, you had to
rewind it. People went and bought devices that would rewind
(16:42):
not in the VCR, but rewind the VHS tape outside
of that very quickly, so that they could take them
back to the store. Do you remember that?
Speaker 5 (16:52):
Yeah, that's that was a weird thing.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Was that?
Speaker 4 (16:54):
Not like a weird point in time? But Blockbuster a
brand that made the two hundred list. Starbucks Think about this,
Starbucks made it socially acceptable to pay six dollars or
more today for a cup of bean juice that you
can't pronounce. Nike, just do it might be the most
(17:17):
aggressively motivational phrase ever trademarked. We just talked about it
on the podcast. Yeah it worked, right. So just some
pause moments to think about in that two hundred list,
and you might have tons of those, thinking about how
a brand has affected you in your life.
Speaker 5 (17:34):
Yeah, well I would think, you know, you give those
pause moments for a few and some of the big ones.
I think you could almost do that for any one
of the ones on the list. You know, that's kind
of where we're at with these brands that they're all
they've had that kind of impact. They're those types of
companies products you know, they've been out there, they've been
in the world, and they've had that impact on the
(17:55):
market where they've been around for that amount of time,
they've engaged with customers. You know, most people know those names.
They can picture the products or what they look like
or how they've been a part of their life. So
they all kind of have that story attached to them.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
And that's a great point. I didn't say this, you
said it. The stories. This is what the greatest brands
do really well, is that they have a great story.
Sometimes they have insanely chaotic starts. Sometimes they last for
a long time. Sometimes those stories have a tragic end.
So all of these brands have those stories, and we're
(18:33):
a part of that, each individual, you know, and how
we interact and gauge with brands. So it's pretty exciting
to have a list like this, it is.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
And seeing the list as a whole, which we will
be posting, you know, I think a lot of people
will have the reaction, which I hope. I can't believe
they didn't include blank, right, And I think that's the
kind of thing we want to hear too. You know,
what did we miss? What were the ones that you
were like, I can't believe this is missing. You know,
I was waiting to hear this and you didn't do it,
(19:01):
or you know, other feedback like, ah, I'm so glad
you had this one on there. This was a definite
for me. So that's kind of thing we're looking for
with when you put together something like this, which is
such a big undertaking.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
I hope there's stuff that people say we missed, Shad,
I can't believe we forgot that.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
There's got to be Yeah, how do we overlook that?
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Hm?
Speaker 4 (19:21):
I feel like it's bound to happen And that's okay.
This is where this back and forth between us the hosts,
and you the listeners. This this is so important, the
relationship that we have together over thirteen years, two hundred
episodes Speaking Human.
Speaker 5 (19:40):
Yeah, so why don't you tell the people where they
can find the full list and how they can get
in touch with us. They want to tell us what
a giant mistake we made with this list.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Yeah, So that's it for today's episode. You can find
current and past episodes of the podcast on Speaking Human
dot com. Searching that little search b. You can put
two hundred in there. You'll get this episode. See the
full list, and if you're so inclined leave us a
little feedback. You can email us at feedback at speakinghuman
dot com.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
We'll be back in two weeks with another episode of
Speaking Human. That's right, this goes beyond the two hundred mark.
We're going to keep going. Catch you then humans
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Speakcking human
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